"Here he analysed with depth and vision such as few have, the fundamental malady of Western Civilisation. He declared that the West had lost its moral courage, starting at the top among the ruling elite and the intellectuals. Solzhenitsyn traced the decadence back to the ideology dominant in the West, lambasting the Western ideal of the happiness of the greatest number and a freedom that becomes licentious. Decades of technical and social progress had granted the masses the accumulation of goods, but also spiritual and moral impoverishment; happiness "in the morally inferior sense." This has led to the desire for ever more possessions, "without opening the way to free spiritual development." The excess of leisure and affluence had undermined any notion of the defence of higher values and of sacrifice. Drawing on the lessons of biology, Solzhenitsyn warned that "habitual safety" is not conducive to the well-being of an organism.

Politically also nothing great could be achieved, because any sign of statesmanship and the need for far-sighted action would be stifled by this desire for "habitual safety." The outstanding individual could not assert himself; mediocrity triumphs in the name of democracy.

"It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations."

"Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space."

"Society appears to have little defence against the abyss of human decadence."